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Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Chris Selley: Umm, Toronto Star? By my count roughly 99.999992 per cent of Canadian kids are not murdered

...The study, by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, concerns abduction and murder by strangers, which is the No. 1 risk North American society has mismanaged for four decades. It is a tiny subsidiary risk of an already tiny one: by my count roughly 99.999992 per cent of Canadian children are not murdered.

Yet the Star provided no data whatsoever on how stranger abductions fit into any bigger picture. Between 2000 and 2012, the biggest cause by far of death among children under 15 was accidents (29 per cent). Next came cancer (16 per cent); genetic conditions (nine per cent); suicide (four per cent); heart disease (3.4 per cent); and then homicide (3.1 per cent).

Over 41 years, the study identifies 155 victims under age 17 of a “stranger or acquaintance” murder. That’s an average of 3.8 victims a year. Over that time, the population of Canadian children has remained steady at around 6.5 million. Anyone can do that math, surely...